One of my strong interests is aviation.  I love airplanes and watching them fly.  Yesterday in Southern California the United States Air Force launched and flew an experimental hypersonic aircraft named the X-51A Waverider.  The plane was dropped off the wing of a modified B-52 bomber at an altitude of 50,000 feet.  After its engine ignited, it flew at a top speed of mach 6 (approximately 4,608 miles per hour) for a duration of 200 seconds.  Joe Vogel, Boeing’s director of hypersonics, said “This is a new world record and sets the foundation for several hypersonic applications including access to space, reconnaissance, strike, global reach, and commercial transportation”.  The sound barrier (mach 1) was first broken by Chuck Yeager on October 14, 1947 over the Mojave Dessert in an aircraft named the Bell X-1.  Below is a video of the X-51A flight on YouTube.